Police detective touts tough love, tough drug penalties

Tough penalties and tough love are the best remedies for city drug problems, Port Jervis Detective Michael Worden said at a recent meeting of the Port Jervis drug task force.

Jessica Cohen

Tough penalties and tough love are the best remedies for city drug problems, Port Jervis Detective Michael Worden said at a recent meeting of the Port Jervis drug task force.

New narcotics formulations and the wide availability of cheap heroin have driven the recent heroin boom in Port Jervis. But from the mid-1990s to 2001, heroin-driven crime was also a problem, he said, and "aggressive enforcement" caused its decline.

"We do well with our conviction rates," Worden said, "but over the years the state took the teeth out of drug laws, and the goal became to get users to treatment options. But with drug abuse, there's so much other crime, like robbery and burglary, so the impact on the population is significant. Heroin users are looking to break into houses to find things to sell."

"Drug dealers aren't getting consequences for the impact they have on society — individual lives drugs ruin, homes broken into," he said. "Penalties should be harsher, not just a minor inconvenience."

He said he encounters families with padlocks on their bedroom doors because an addicted family member is otherwise liable to steal their possessions, including family heirlooms, to buy drugs.

And while in the past people tended to be exposed to heroin by people they knew, Worden said the recent heroin influx has been driven by pharmaceutical addiction — people who can no longer afford prescription drugs seek out heroin instead.

Task force member Jack Austin said he worked in a Sunset Park addiction program and told parents that their misbehaving, drug-abusing children should be kicked out of the house.

Worden concurred. "Families have been crying in my office because they got their kids arrested. Parents protected them the hard way. Now their kids are clean, but it was a rough spot."

"Some parents bail their kids out," said Austin. "It's a mistake."

But many people, including parents whose children have drugs, fail to recognize what they see, said Worden. He brought an exhibit of drug and paraphernalia examples to the Port Jervis meeting.

The drug display was diverse, including several dozen varieties of often-abused drugs, from

Demerol, crack cocaine and heroin to a blotter of LSD and an ecstasy tablet necklace. But still, Viviana Galli, psychiatrist for Port Jervis Mental Health Services, spotted an omission.

She said she wants to educate doctors about prescription addiction because she sees her patients finding doctors to give them habit-sustaining prescriptions. She said she has particularly seen a shift to heroin in the last 18 months.

So has Tera Colavito, social work supervisor at Bon Secours Community Hospital. "We hear all the time that people switched to heroin because it was cheaper," Colavito said.